| Popis: |
The above quote from The Little Prince conveys archetypal patterns of power, relationships and processes between academics working out of ivory towers who describe the lived experiences of communities or publics. The figure of the Explorer in The Little Prince can represent the multiple positions that such ‘communities’ can occupy, including the roles of co-researchers and activist researchers. Understandings of the world can be constructed through the experiences of these Explorers, while the Geographer claims an absence of experience and engages in the ‘more important’ work of collecting accounts from others and recording them in an objective fashion. The Geographer is dependent on receiving information from the Explorer: without subjective reports from the Explorer’s travels, the Geographer has no material to work with and no existence as a geographer. The Geographer codifies information, making it knowledge, and offers an ‘expert’ view on other people’s experiences. The figure of the Geographer who is too busy to get his hands dirty and who asserts that to step away from his desk is to ‘waste time’ has been challenged, initially by feminist researchers demanding the positioning of scholars as part of the research, as well as challenged in discussions of the need for an engagement with the power relations between explorers and geographers (see, for example, Rose, 1993, 1997; Harding, 1987, 1991). In this paper, developing from the participatory research that has emerged from these beginnings, we examine the power relations of working beyond the boundaries of researcher/community/policy maker. |
